Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back for today's sabbath message. As if to remind us how quickly things can change, we yesterday experienced a drop in temperature from 30°C (86°F) to 12°C (54°F) in one night (that's a drop of 18°C or 32°F...that's Scandinavia for you!) It has felt like moving from Summer to Autumn (Fall) in one sudden move and though those of us who have been swealtering are, of course, relieved, to be a bit cooler, those of us who have to 'look forward' to paying winter fuel bills are less than enthused. Personally I'm ready to swealter again!

Also yesterday when I visited our local IT expert I was told, definitely, that all the data on my work computer was irretrievably lost which was what I was expecting even though he told me last week that he would have another try at saving it. So that's gone. Moments like these are tough. I am reminded of the American missiony to Korea in the 1800's who spent years and years and years translating the Bible into Korean for the first time. He was crossing some body of water with the finished hand-written manuscript on the way to the publishers when he was caught in a storm and drowned, taking his Bible translation with him. Can you believe that? All kinds of thoughts swirl around the mind about the 'big picture', divine sovereignty, and the like and sometimes you wonder if everything is, in fact, futile. But do you know how that particular story ended? I know many of you here know this story well but this may be new to many of our listeners.

Well, the Bible manuscript eventually washed ashore in some fishing village. The Koreans were, for the most part, either Buddhists or followed a number of folk religions at that time. I have no idea what the religion of that fishing village was. But someone found the manuscript, and given how valuable paper was, he had the bright idea of using it to wallpaper his hut with some of the pages. And there the surviving parts of the manuscript remained (the rest presumably being used to start fires or wrap things up, who knows what - it reminds me of how some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were used by the bedouin to start fires with as they had no idea what it was they were in possession of). So there they are, pages from this dead American missionary's translation of the Bible plastered on the inside walls of some fisherman's hut. And then one day somebody, who is literate, reads them, and guess what? He is converted! Then others in the village are converted, and this is how Christianity started in Korea, would you believe it?

Now, I don't know why Yahweh sometimes uses such unexpected and inexplicable methods to spread His Davar (Word). The missionary died and his translation, the labour of years, was lost. But what he did initiated evangelism in Korea leading eventually to millions of converts. No doubt Satan was involved somewhere in this picture, trying to prevent this missionary's labours succeeding. Maybe the missionary wasn't supposed to travel by boat that day. Maybe he hadn't listened to the Ruach (Spirit), I don't know, and the devil took advantage. Yet Yahweh's work was not thwarted. Was that the scenario? I don't know.

Now I'm usually pretty careful about making copies and backups of my work - indeed I duplicate our website and distribute it free, far and wide, to make sure it isn't lost. But unexpected things happen, sometimes it seems as though the Enemy gets the upper hand, Yahweh it seems fails to deliver in the way we would like, and atheistic thoughts start intruding when things don't work out the way we think they should, don't they? You know what I mean, sometimes events look totally random as you would expect if the atheistic view of reality is correct and everything happens by chance, with no overall direction or purpose. There are times when life certainly seems like that and Yahweh doesn't seem to be in evidence. Then you may start having doubts and struggles as you seek for 'explanations' and before long you're turning to the Book of Job, or to the nevi'im (prophets), and wondering whether what you're going through is what the Greeks called a peirasmos or 'time of testing'. Sometimes that's the explanation, sometimes it isn't, sometimes it's part of the reason incomprehensible things are going on. And the deeper you dig, the more frustratingly perplexing it can become! And what it is we're usually doing is looking for justice and meaning in life.

Though the Bible most certainly gives answers to the questions raised by our trials and tribulation, when Yahweh seems distant, uninvolved and disinterested, they are not usually in the kind of detail we would like and typically they're not told in the way we would like. I find the Book of Habakkuk helpful in this regard. The message I distill from it basically goes along the following lines: We are to wait in hope for the delay of divine deliverance but remember that even if vindication in our favour is delayed - assuming that, like Job, we are innocent and are not reaping something negative we have sown - the instruction to us is that, even if we find ourselves in a situation like the missionary to Korea or me with my ruined harddrive, we are to wait with utter confidence in Yahweh, and simply anticipate His victory in whatever form He chooses it to happen. If we are people of the resurrection as we claim to be - if we really believed it happened, as I believe we are absolutely compelled to because of the evidence - then we who look forward to the future resurrection, who draw, as it were, on resurrection power on credit with which to negociate the endlessly complex and sometimes hostile present, then we should start learning to draw strength now from a future that is to come. And there should be evidence of that divine strengthening in action. I've certainly seem plenty of evidence of it in my life.

Granted, that may sound, at face value, to be philosophical mumbo-jumbo so let me at least attempt to explain. In my experience, which I admit is far from being complete but which I hope will be of some value to those of you younger in the faith, our reaction to trials and tribulations is typically immature and inappropriate. It's immature because we don't 'see' or 'get' the bigger picture, and that isn't something we can learn propositionally or intellectually but comes only with experience. Apparently we need to go through the hard and unpleasant stuff because that's the best (and probably only) way to learn in any sort of permanent way. And I don't know of a single living soul who doesn't go through 'unpleasant stuff'. Ask anyone. Everyone is suffering, has suffered, or will suffer. It's a fact of mortality.

We react 'inappropriately' when we start to entertain atheistic thoughts and feelings of doubt and perhaps start complaining or even blaming Elohim (God) for 'doing' or 'allowing' bad things to happen to us because He's either mean or doesn't care. Deep down we know neither are true, if we've been born again and actually met Him, yet we have our bad days, and not only with Him but also with our nearest and dearest. One of the hardest things for me to come to terms with is the idea that life is some sort of philosopher's puzzle that we absolutely need to figure out to find peace of mind. We all philosophise. And by 'philosophise' I mean to think and/or talk deeply and reflectively for a long time about subjects such as the meaning of life or other abstract subjects. The problem is we can never come to final answers on such subjects. Because we are finite, everything we conclude is of necessary incomplete and therefore tentative. Yet we demand to know. Well, maybe you don't, in which case maybe you are blessed, but I admit that I do. Maybe, as I spoke about last week, it's a male thing to keep pushing the boundaries outwards.

I mentioned the little Book of Habakkuk, didn't I? The navi (prophet) who launches straight away, without hestitation, or introduction, or any sort of formalities, into a complaint about all the violence in the land being caused by Chaldeans:

"O Yahweh, how long shall I cry for help, and You will not listen? or cry to You, 'Violence!' and You will not save. Why do You make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous - therefore judgment comes forth perverted" (Hab.1:1-4, NRSV)

One of the curses if the Internet is that it brings an avalanche of the lastest news from all around the world to us in seconds, so our senses get overloaded with all the insanity and suffering going on. We're just bombarded with information. It can be so overwhelming at times that the only sensible thing you can actually do is turn the wretched computer off and go and do something else, preferably relaxing with your eyes and ears being given a chance to process less. For thousands of years we have usually only dealt with very local news and sometimes news from afar, and then only 'now and then'. And that was bad enough. Yet though Habakkuk complains in the first two chapters, what he absolutely does do is to affirm divine justice and does not neglect his duty. He doesn't stay in 'complain mode' He affirms, like a good servant of Elohim (God):

"I will stand at my watchpost, and will station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what [Yahweh] will say to me, and what He will answer concerning my complaint" (Hab.2:1, NRSV).

This is emunah (faith) speaking. He'll carry on trusting and serving as usual until Yahweh speaks. Tyically for those without the prophetic gift, Yahweh doesn't say anything fresh but simply brings to mind a scripture as I am doing now. And, indeed, if you're a Protestant cessationist, that more or less the only way you believe Yahweh has spoken in nearly 2,000 years since the apostles died, i.e. through the Bible alone. Now in this particular case Yahweh does answer the navi (prophet) directly and tells him to write on tablets the vision he is about to be shown so that a runner can read it out at the appointed places. And then Yahweh speaks some immortal words. Follow with me in chapter 2 and verse 2:

"Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay" (Hab.2:2b-3, NRSV).

Here is something we must understand - the navi (prophet) Daniel, I think, brings this out particularly clearly - and it's this: all that we experience, the good and the evil, has to be seen in the context of a bigger picture which will always be too big for us to see however hard we try. What is the bigger picture? The bigger picture is the restoration and justification of not just you and me, important though we are to Him, but of the WHOLE OF CREATION. And the restoration of the whole of creation can only come about by the proper, sequential, carefully timed overthrow of the forces of evil all the while respecting human free agency, like a surgeon doing complicated surgery cooperating with the reality of the patient's condition.

A vitally imporant part of that, which He puts the spotlight on again and again in Scripture, is the visible vindication of His people - Yahweh's faithful, loyal talmidim or disciples. What I want to urgently and forcefully, if I may, suggest to you - what I want to embolden and underline so that you underatand its overriding importance over everything else - is that OUR LOYALTY IS WHAT MATTERS MOST TO OUR HEAVENLY FATHER. And I have to say, as a husband, father and minister, the most important, precious and treasured thing to me personally is loyalty. And you can break down or define that word in whatever way you want to try and do so, but I think eveyone instinctively knows what I mean by it.

If you agree with that - and I hope you do - then there remains but one other important question: who are Elohim's (God's) people? How can we identify them? But before we address that question, let me reconnect to an earlier statement I made about the immature and inappropriate ways we often respond with to our trials and tribulations. One of the dangerous half-truths we are taught by well-intentioned but ill-advised people is that "good people have good things happen to them and bad people have bad things happen to them". And so 'if bad things happen to you, it's always because you have done bad things', goes the faulty thinking. That obviously didn't happen to Joseph of Egypt yet this was the reasoning used by Job's false comforters to explain his misery. It's the same false thinking that those in the 'Prosperity Movement' use to 'explain' why people are poor or sick. Only recently a Pentecostal minister accused me of being so ill I needed heart surgery was because of some terrible sin I had committed even though I told him I was born with a heart disorder. You can hurt people and drive them away this way if you're not very careful. Believers sometimes over-simplify Deuteronomy and Psalm 1. Psalm 73 is overlooked in these over-simplifications by immature students of the Bible which is why we need to take such scriptures and set them alongside other scriptures like Psalm 1 to get a proper balance.

So let's do that. Psalm 1 begins:

"Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the Torah (Law, Teaching) of Yahweh, and on His Torah (law) they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all they do, they prosper" (Ps.1:1-3, NRSV)

Well, Joseph prospered in all he did but that didn't prevent him from being sold into slavery, falsely accused of adultery, and thrown into prison too. And so Psalm 73 forces us to zoom out into the reality of the bigger picture. Let's take the first five verses:

"Truly Elohim (God) is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me (Asaph), my feet had almost stumbled: my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant ('proud' - NLT; 'boastful' - NKJV; 'foolish' - KJV); I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people..." (Ps.73:1-5, NRSV).

A mature view of life examines experience not in the immediate short term but takes the long-term view. Yes, we can, and do, enjoy good things in the here-and-now but all too often there are bad things happening to us while the wicked appear to get away with murder. Promises to 'drain the swamp' remain unrealised and that can be very frustrating because we don't see the bigger or more long-term prophetic picture. We wait for our nations' vindication and we wait for our own. Yahweh continues to be good to us even if dire circumstances make us wonder. Yahweh blessed Jospeh in Pottiphar's household, then in prison, and then as Prime Minister of Egypt. The truth is, our blanket analyses of situations are invariably wrong. We just don't have the divine perspective, and in saying that I am not trying to make excuses or copping out: once you have lived more than just three or four decades to see longer stretches of time than those who are younger, you start seeing these things which you couldn't before when you were an immature believer.

We have a tendency, which originates with the Old Creation or fallen nature, to have an over-exaggerated sense of our either own wonderfulness (at one extreme) or our own abject wretchedness (at the other). Both are prideful. This brings me back to the question: who are Elohim's (God's) people that we might know whether we belong to that set-apart body or not? I think a good way of answering that question is by considering whom Yahweh considers to be particularly 'righteous' servants and then we can re-ask ourselves how 'wonderful' or 'wretched' we really are.

Turn with me, if you would, to Ezekiel 14:14 in your NKJV (Evidence Bible, p.1142) and let's get Yahweh's evaluation:

"The Davar Yahweh (Word of the LORD) came again to me, saying: 'Son of man, when a land sins against Me by persistent unfaithfulness, I will stretch out My hand against it; I will cut off its supply of bread, send famine on it, and cut off man and beast from it. Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness,' says Yahweh-Elohim.

"'If I cause wild beasts to pass through the land, and they empty it, and make it so desolate that no man may pass through because of the beasts, even though these three men were in it, as I live,' says Yahweh-Elohim, 'they would deliver neither sons nor daughters; only they would be delivered, and the land would be desolate.

"'Or if I bring a sword on that land, and say, 'Sword, go through the land,' and I cut off man and beast from it, even though these three men were in it, as I live," says Yahweh-Elohim, 'they would deliver neither sons nor daughters, but only they themselves would be delivered.

"'Or if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out My fury on it in blood, and cut off from it man and beast, even though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live,' says Yahweh-Elohim, 'they would deliver neither son nor daughter; they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness.'

"For thus says Yahweh-Elohim: 'How much more it shall be when I send My four severe judgments on Jerusalem -- the ¹sword and ²famine and ³wild beasts and ⁴pestilence -- to cut off man and beast from it? Yet behold, there shall be left in it a remnant who will be brought out, both sons and daughters; surely they will come out to you, and you will see their ways and their doings. Then you will be comforted concerning the disaster that I have brought upon Jerusalem, indeed all that I have brought upon it. And they will comfort you, when you see their ways and their doings; and you shall know that I have done nothing without cause that I have done in it,' says Yahweh-Elohim" (Ezek.14:12-23, NKJV).

Lots to say here. Up to this time, Yahweh declares that Noah, Daniel and Job were the three most righteous men who had ever lived and yet we remember also Noah's drunkeness (Gen.9:21), Daniel's prayer of confession (Dan.9:1-19), and Job's hand across his mouth with nothing more to say in his own defence (Job 40:3-5). Abraham got it wrong as did Moses on occasion. David, one of the greatest qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones), was also one of the worst sinners. Notice in the Ezekiel passage we read that a remnant is preserved and they are not as 'wonderful' as Noah, Daniel, or Job, yet they too are counted as righteous by Yahweh!

So what makes Yahweh's people 'His people'? Their loyalty! Their loyalty to Him personally. Their loyalty to the Covenant. Their loyalty to His Torah (Law, Teaching). Their loyalty to those whom Yahweh has appointed as heads - wives to husbands (a husband is a wife's pastor and priest), children to fathers or legal guardians (fathers are pastors or priests to their children), and patriarchs (father-husbands) to their pastors. (And, of course, reverse loyalty is important too). All of these constitute faithfulness or living by emunah (faith).

There are boundaries or limits to be sure as far as the 'pale of acceptability' is concerned that constitutes Elohim's (God's) people, and though we are - and they were - called to perfection (Mt.5:48), the fact that we are loyally trusting and striving, and repenting when we fail, is what counts. This is what it means when Job was described as "blameless and upright, one who feared Elohim (God) and turned away from evil" (Job 1:1, NRSV). Though he complained at first, Job was humble enough to realise his arrogance. He put his hand over his mouth - but notice he didn't cover his eyes or plug his ears. He just shut up and let Yahweh instruct him for several chapters of text! Part of righteous submission is shutting up whilst watching and listening carefully. Job concludes his lesson:

"...I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Hear, and I will speak: I will question You, and You declare to me. I had heard of You by the hearing of m6y ear, but now my eyes see You. Therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:3b-56, NRSV).

I believe that the greatest peirasmos or 'time of testing' that believers go through are those times when we are shown and have to face how mature or immature our responses are to trial and tribulation. It's a way of finding out whether we have spiritually grown or not, and what our mettle really is. How do we keep the prophetic perspective of Habakkuk and maintain the righteous attitude of Noah, Daniel and Job? If we do, then we may know whether we are of the remnant or not. Is the remnant perfect? No, but it is true and loyal. It is faithful. It keeps watch in spite of its sufferings, keeping its eyes on Yah'shua (Jesus) and waits patiently for Yahweh's revelation, trusting in the meantime. Yahweh chooses to bring the world back to rights through deeply flawed people but that is never an excuse to be faithless, not for a true son of the overcomer, Israel.

One day Yah'shua (Jesus) is coming back to rule, judge, heal and save. In the meantime, we are called to loyally serve and take advantage of the resurrection chayim (life) that He makes available to us. Don't give up. Don't quit. Go to Yahweh for renewing. Do the things you know you should have done and carry on doing the things you have been doing in obedience to His mitzvot (commandments). I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at Rosh Chodesh. Yahweh bless you and give you His shalom (peace) in Yah'shua our Messiah (Jesus Christ). Amen.

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